Page 47 of Mafia King's Ruthless Obsession

Not just my body. Not just my relationship. It cuts through the future I’d been building like a knife. My plans for the club. My position here. My carefully strategized rise. I wanted to turn the Velvet Echo into a legacy—something to reclaim my father’s name on my own terms. To prove I could rebuild the empire he ruined, not as Boris Olenko’s daughter, but as someone stronger and smarter.

One missed period and a scent-induced unraveling and I’m spiraling. I touch my still-flat stomach, breath shallow.

I never planned for this.

But worse, I always feared it.

Because my mother had a baby and no power. My mother had a man and no voice. She spent her life trapped under someone else’s name, someone else’s violence. I swore I wouldn’t end up like her.

And yet here I am.

As I stare down at the floor tiles, damp and scuffed beneath the bathroom light, another truth rises quietly. A dangerous one.

I don’t want to run from this.

I want to build something better.

Not just for me, but for the child I didn’t know I wanted until it threatened to ruin everything. I want this place to be more than smoke and skin and secrets. I want to create something real. Something clean. Something my child could be proud of.

Not just velvet and shadows.

But something solid.

I press a hand to my abdomen, swallowing the lump rising in my throat. But I can’t do that alone. I’d need a united front. I’d need protection and power. I’d need Vasiliy.

And Vasiliy…doesn’t like change. He controls outcomes. He manipulates variables. He doesn’treact—hecalculates. So what happens when the one variable he never expected lands in his lap?

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Rebeka says, misreading my silence.

I look at her, startled by her gentleness.

“But you should know,” she continues, her gaze sharpening, “Vasiliy has a way of knowing things. Especially about people he thinks are his.”

That word.

His.

It slices through me. Yes, Vasiliy considers me his—his employee, his possession, his favorite toy behind closed doors. But this? This baby? This isn’t something he can own. It’s not something he can control.

It’s something that will bind us forever.

And I don’t know if that terrifies me or thrills me.

Rebeka touches my arm. Her hand is warm and grounding.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

I nod, but my voice betrays me. “I need some air.”

She doesn’t stop me, just calls, “Tell the choreographer you’ll look at the rest tomorrow?”

I nod again and slip past her.

Her last words cling like smoke:Men like Vasiliy don’t change. Not even for the women carrying their children.

I don’t look back.

The club feels too tight now. Too full of noise and perfume and shadows. The bass thumps through the walls—heartbeat-like, mocking. I push through the front doors and out into the street, gulping down air like I’ve been underwater.

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